Gentrify

[anansi133]

I got really spoiled, learning to use social media back when it was called bulliten board systems. Back in that time (when we low-crawled through the snow, uphill both ways) the sphere of subscribers was limited to a local phone call, commercial announcements were mostly irrelevant (and infrequent), and there was some incentive to meet each other

Comments

[houseboatonstyx]

I miss Usenet. Maybe some of us should get together and colonize in the ruins.

What would it take, actually? A really good, standalone, free Usenet reader? Starting some new, moderated, groups from scratch?

[anansi133]

I've looked into getting usenet from my account, and pretty much every ISP wants more money to allow access. There are services that'll give you usenet access from the web, again they charge. I have read a convincing argument that any internet protocol can be embedded into any other internet protocol, so if you had the right software, you could push and pull usenet packets right out of the box.

The more I think about it, though, I think the core problem is that a free service never really has me as a customer, rather, I am the product. So the most interesting question I can ask is, what would I be willing to pay for, in terms of an internet presence, and would anyone else be willing to pony up?

For that matter, my dream ISP is a cooperative that I participate in, kinda like the rural power coops. We'd pool our money, bandwidth, and expertise. Hard to imagine herding enough cats in that direction, but it's still a worthy dream.

[randomdreams]

> I think the core problem is that a free service never really has me as a customer, rather, I am the product.

Listservs, IRC's, MOO/MUD/MUSH's...

[randomdreams]

Thus far G+ hasn't started spewing ads everywhere, I think because they're busy getting info and then using that for ads elsewhere.
but with that said, LJ is still doing better for me than friendster, tribe, myspace, facebook, or g+ ever did.